


Sometimes the only choices you have are bad ones. But you still have to choose

by Quasar_93



Series: Joi ga joy [1]
Category: Gintama
Genre: Angst, But also, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Gintoki really needs a hug, Hurt No Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-20
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-17 12:14:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29592651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quasar_93/pseuds/Quasar_93
Summary: Gintoki, after the battles of Iga and the Kokujo prison island against Takasugi and Utsuro, finds himself thinking about the past more than he would like to admit. These new and strong emotions mixed with old his memories unleash again a deep and unmotivated fear that shakes him from within, making him believe that he is nothing more than a defective samurai on the verge of madness.While he hides from the eyes of his friends to conceal his state of mind he thinks back to the first times he has ever experienced that terror.
Series: Joi ga joy [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2181342
Kudos: 16





	1. Prologue - The Downfall

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Sometimes the only choices you have are bad ones. But you still have to choose.](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/763932) by Quasar93. 



> The original version of this fanfiction is on EFP in Italian, also written by me. This is the translation I made, I'm sorry for whichever mistake you may find. English is not my first language, so please be kind :)

Fear.  
Sudden, meaningless and so intense that it takes his breath away.  
The first time Gintoki had experienced such a feeling again was after Iga's battle, after the fight with his old friend Shinsuke Takasugi.

He was at the hospital in Edo and it had been three weeks since he had again crossed swords with the other man and he could not stop thinking about it. All those years, all that time wasted hating each other when, after all, the person they both really hated was themselves. It hurt Gintoki to see how much all the things that happened had transformed the man with whom he fought back to back in the war, the child at whose side he had followed the teachings of Shoyo, the friend to whom he would have entrusted his life in battle. Not for the changing itself, he had changed as well, but seeing is former friend walking on that destructive path made his heart ache deeply. He could not help but think that it was all his fault: not only he had failed to protect Shoyo but also his friend, who had drifted and got lost due to a pain that he more than anyone else knew deeply. If only they had spoken before, if only they had crossed swords sooner in a fight that would have served more than a thousand words.  
  


It was while he was thinking about those events for the umpteenth time, wondering if Takasugi was really beyond saving or if it was possible to bring him back to the light somehow instead of killing him, that fear shown up. His head started spinning and he felt short of breath. He immediately looked around in alarm, more frightened that someone could see him in that state than of what would happen to him. Luckily for him at that moment there was no one at his bedside. He tried to breathe deeply and slowly, and the fear slowly went back to where it came from.

Was he going crazy again? Why was he afraid? Afraid of what? Was his heart unable to bear the idea of killing Takasugi like he did with Shoyo?

Was he scared of not being able to save his friend again?

_Fear in me so deep_ _  
It gets the best of me  
In the fear I fall  
Here it comes face to face with me  
Here I stand  
Hold back so no one can see  
I feel these wounds  
Step down, step down, step…_

  
The second time that sudden fear knocked on Gintoki's door was while he was hiding in Akiba along with Katsura's Joi rebels. After the events of the prison island of Kokujo he had become a fugitive from the Bakufu and certainly he could not return to the Yorozuya as if nothing had happened.

His life, for the first time in a long time, was about to change irremediably.

That night he was resting in a futon next to Shinpachi and Kagura. The injuries he sustained during the fight with Utsuro screamed for attention, more to remind him of who his enemy was than for the physical pain itself. If after the fight against Takasugi, Gintoki was experiencing a frenetic emotional mix, now the meeting with Utsuro had definitively destabilized him.

He didn't know what to think nor what was the right **thing** to do. Never as in that moment did his will and the right thing to do diverge in this way. Nevertheless he couldn't let anyone know, he had to be strong, he had to be an idiot, he had to be the same old Gintoki not to worry the people who counted on him. There was no room for his thoughts, not now that the situation was far from resolved. He turned to look at the kids playing alongside him and felt his chest tighten. He was out of breath again and his hands felt sweaty.

 _No, no... Not now, not in front of them,_ he thought, trying with all his strength to push back those sensations that were trying to overwhelm him, taking control of his body and his mind. He was terrified and began to tremble imperceptibly, trying to hide the asphyxiating sense of unmotivated danger he felt. He wanted to send the kids away immediately but he feared that if he had opened his mouth, he would have betrayed himself.

Why had this senseless fear returned to visit him? He hoped it was a closed chapter of his past, an eradicated weakness. The last time it was like this...

No, thinking about it now would have only made the situation worse. He needed to escape. If he couldn't get the kids away, he could always leave. If they had seen him like this, if they had understood that there was something wrong with him, he feared that they would have left him alone. He jumped up and, under the surprised and questioning looks of the two kids, he run in the bathroom and locked the door, once alone he leaned against it and let himself slide onto the floor, breathing heavily. It made him sick to feel so weak and scared, he was ashamed to death, especially because there was no reason to feel that way.  
But after all he had always been like that, he thought, now as then he was just a defective samurai unable to protect anything.

  
_No one can see_ _  
Everything on the other side of me  
I walk I crawl  
Losing everything and waiting  
For a downfall  
No one can see  
Anything on the other side of me  
I walk I crawl  
Losing everything on the downfall_


	2. Chapter 1 - War of change

_It's a truth that in love and war,  
World's collide and hearts get broken,  
I want to live like I know I'm dying,  
Take up my cross, not be afraid_

Gintoki left the field hospital and headed to the bonfire where two of the other three Heavenly Kings of the Joi rebel army were waiting for him: Kotaro Katsura, The Rampaging Noble

and Shinsuke Takasugi, the Kiheitai Leader. That evening the silver-haired samurai was nervous, which was strange to him. Despite his young age, he was just twenty-one years old after all he was in fact used to the battlefield. One could say that, in a certain way, he was himself a creation of the battlefield. As a war orphan, he had to fight and rob the corpses killed by others to survive as long as he could remember. And now that sensei Shoyo had been captured and his home set on fire, the battlefield was his home once again.

They had trod those bloodstained lands for four years, fighting the war against the invaders of the sky to defend their country. But the truth that they would never admit to the troops was that they had one more goal, which was even more important to them than their own homeland: to attack the Tenshoin Naraku and save their sensei from their claws.

Precisely for this reason Gintoki was so tense that evening. The time had finally come. They had found the location of one of the Ravens' strongholds, the one where they kept Shoyo. They would attack that very night, only the final details remained to be defined. The silver-haired samurai should have felt euphoric, almost excited, at the idea of finally being able to fight the battle that more than any other he wanted to fight, so close to the goal he had been chasing since the night the Naraku had burned Shoka Sonjuku and had taken away the man who had been a father to him, as well as a sensei. Yet that was not what he felt. That was not the agitation that pervaded his body. Was he... afraid? He pushed that feeling back with all his strength. Samurai don't get scared, he could not get scared.

Not in battle.

Not before _that_ battle.

_Is it true what they say, that words are weapons?  
And if it is, then everybody best stop steppin',  
Cause I got ten in my pocket that'll bend ya locket,  
I'm tired of all these rockers sayin' come with me_

“Gintoki! What took you so long? Is everything okay? " Katsura distracted him from his thoughts, seeing him hesitate before sitting with them around the bonfire. Gintoki nodded and joined them but did not answer. His friend's words had shaken him a bit, but inside him he continued to feel that apprehension from before, however faint, and he could not totally ignore nor silence it.

“Well, now that the little princess has arrived, we can begin our meeting. By the way, congratulations on getting hurt the day before our operation, Shiroyasha” Takasugi said, as his voice and his gaze vied for which of the two was the sharpest.

"Congratulations for hurting yourself the day before our operation, Shiroyasha" the silver-haired man made a grimace, then continued "...and for the record I'm fine, I only received a smear blow to the shoulder" he finished, hiding the indignation in his voice.

"Fortunately, today it's my turn to be the general, otherwise the operation would have ended before it began" ruled Katsura, trying to put an end to the umpteenth quarrel between his friends. “Zura, don't be so hard on me. Here the unsuitable one is clearly Takasugi” Gintoki grinned, pushing further and further down the sting of fear he kept feeling inside.

"But if it's you who can't help but end up in the infirmary after each fight" the Kiheitai leader retorted, approaching the silver-haired friend, his gaze fixed on that of the other.

“That’s because I actually do something! Only those who don't fight don't get hurt” Shiroyasha chuckled again and deftly dodged a punch that Takasugi threw in his direction. Without saying a word Katsura stood up, while the other two kept on bickering. He came up behind them and hit the two with two straight blows on the head in a way that reminded the three of them of their sensei.

"If you are done, it's time to move on to define the details of the plan" he then said quietly, with a tone so frightening in his calmness that they both stood **at** attention.

The three men discussed for hours about their strategy, how they would manage their units to attack the Naraku’s fortress from three different fronts, how many and which soldiers they would employ and how they would take Shoyo away once freed. They were almost done when Gintoki felt that sensation again. That strange fear so sudden and out of context was very confusing for him, why would he be afraid in a moment like that?

He was not in immediate danger.

Of course, the sun was setting and the impending darkness was not helpful but he was used to managing these tense evenings before the battles and yet, right in that moment, with only a few hours to go, that uncontrollable feeling was preventing him from focusing on what his friends were saying.

"Gintoki, are you all right?" Katsura asked, noticing that his friend was absent for a moment.

"Yes Zura, everything’s ok. I was just lost in my thoughts” Shiroyasha lied.

He wasn't all right.

He did not even hear his friend repeat for the umpteenth time that it was not Zura but Katsura, because his head began to spin like a top. Luckily, he was sitting. A retch of nausea made him flinch.

What was happening to him?

The fear began to increase, now it was not just a sensation, it was palpable. He was afraid of what was happening to him. He didn't understand, it was meaningless, and this terrified him even more. Why was his body going crazy?

Or was he going crazy?

Maybe he couldn't handle that tension! Maybe he wasn't fit to be a samurai after all and his body was trying to tell him that. Samurai are not afraid. Not that far from the battlefield. Shoyo had misjudged him. What kind of hope could he represent? How could he protect the others while his sensei was away? What if he couldn't fight back that absurd fear that paralyzed him? What could he ever protect? The more he thought the worse **he** felt, he began to struggle to breathe, as if invisible hands were gripping his throat.

_Wait, it's just about to break, its more than I can take,  
Everything's about to change,  
I feel it in my veins, its not going away,  
Everything's about to change._

He had to get away from there before the others realized he was not well. If he managed to calm down, he would be back. If he couldn’t... well at that rate he might even have died, he felt his heart accelerate to an unbearable pace and his breath failing more and more. He was tempted to put his hands to his throat but he managed to stop himself somehow. He mumbled an excuse and got up, trying to cover up the chaos that was shaking him from the inside and behave in a way that was at least apparently normal. He turned around a corner and he sneaked into a tent of the camp which he knew was empty. He then finally collapsed to the ground and began to breathe heavily, he couldn't understand anything anymore. The only thing he felt was the fear that shook him from the depths of his bones. His hands were shaking slightly and he was cold. His head was spinning so fast it made him sick and his heart was beating so loud that he was convinced he could hear it out loud.

He would have died like that, he was sure of it now.

Scared.

Alone.

Away from the battlefield and with dishonor.

Then, suddenly, as everything had started, it all stopped. He gradually regained his sense of himself, his heart slowed down and his breathing returned to normal. Even that sudden fear, that unmotivated terror, had disappeared as it had arrived, letting the natural tension that preceded such an important battle kick in. When he was sure he was back to normal, Gintoki got up to go out and back to the others, trying to bury that episode deep inside himself, without really looking for a rational explanation. What he was sure of was that he would never tell anything to anyone about it, hoping that it would just be an isolated episode, caused by the stress of the war.

Little more than a waking nightmare.

He didn't even want to consider feeling this way again.

_It creeps in like a thief in the night,  
Without a sign, without a warning,  
But we are ready and prepared to fight,  
Raise up your swords, don't be afraid_

He returned to his friends babbling an excuse about having to dump a number two in a hurry. Zura hit him, and then they began to work on the final details again.

The **mission** was only a few hours away and they couldn't waste any more time. What Gintoki did not know was that what more than anything else he wanted to keep hidden from his comerades was no longer his secret anymore. Takasugi, not seeing him return, went to look for him and, from a tear in the curtain, he saw everything.

He had seen the terror in his eyes and felt his labored breathing. At that time, he had preferred not to tell him anything and pretend not to have seen him. After all, he would have had many more opportunities once they returned from the mission with sensei by their side.


	3. Chapter 2 - The Next Right Thing

Chapter 3

_I've seen dark before, but not like this  
This is cold, this is empty, this is numb  
The life I knew is over, the lights are out  
Hello, darkness, I'm ready to succumb_

Nothing had gone as they hoped.

Katsura and Takasugi had been captured and their platoons scattered. Gintoki had received the news from a soldier who had reached his detachment and it took him a second to abandon his mission and run to save his friends.

He didn't even need to think about it. He had promised Shoyo he would have protected his comerades until his return. He simply had to go and save them, the mission could wait, they could have tried again another time. But, when Gintoki arrived where the Crows were, he found them waiting for him. They had set up an ambush and managed to capture him in a short time, shorter than he'd liked to admit. He had gone there without a plan, driven only by the irrepressible desire to save his friends, while the Crows were sure that he would come and were prepared.

And so there he was, marching on a very high cliff with no way to escape, walking among his enemies, parting in half the crowd of Crows who was standing in front of him. His hands were not tied, that itself was not a good sign, and they gave him a weapon, that was even worse.

Then he saw what was happening on the cliff and only then he understood.

In front of him there were his friends, his brothers, lying tied up on the ground. In front of them there was Shoyo, he was tied up as well, kneeling and facing the void beyond the cliff.

No, it couldn’t go like this.

The hand with which he held the katana trembled, he knew what was going to happen.

He paused for a moment, overwhelmed by his thoughts, but the Naraku behind him kept threatening him with their weapons and so he moved some steps forward again. He saw Takasugi and Katsura's looks for a moment, they were surprised to see him there at least as much as they were terrified seeing him untied and armed.

Probably they had also guessed what was about to happen. After all, the position in which they had forced their sensei was leaving no doubt.

They wanted an exemplary execution.

Gintoki could hear the Tendoshu man standing beyond his sensei, on the verge of the cliff, blathering something about the war, but he couldn't really hear what he was saying.

At some point Gintoki started moving, but he wasn't in charge of his body, he moved almost by inertia. He had to concentrate to listen and not be estranged from that scene that didn't seem to belong to reality.

“… Your pupils died for nothing, as you taught them. You’re looking at me as to say 'I didn't teach them any of this'. So, do we want to give it a try? "

For the first time, the words of the amanto reached Gintoki, but the anger that he should have felt did not come. All he felt in that moment was a deep and dark resignation, an infinite sense of helplessness that deprived him of the strength to react, to raise his head, to rebel against that situation.

It was over, and he knew it.

They had lost, they had failed the mission and by now there was nothing more he could do. His friends were on the ground, his teacher in the position of a condemned man.

The Crows, as messengers of death, surrounded them and seemed to suffocate him with their presence.

_I follow you around, I always have  
But you've gone to a place I cannot find  
This grief has a gravity, it pulls me down  
But a tiny voice whispers in my mind  
‘You are lost, hope is gone  
But you must go on  
And do the next right thing’_

The Tendoshu man spoke again, without turning to face the samurai, but it was obvious that he was talking to Shoyo's students. In fact, Gintoki was sure he was talking to him directly.

"Will your students choose to die in vain, like you, or will they choose to survive even if the price is killing their sensei with their own hands?"

Gintoki's body froze in shock **.**

What were they asking him to do? What were his options? What choice did they want him to make? Killing Shoyo with the katana they gave him or committing seppuku? Or did he have to fight all those Crows alone? In that case the choice would have been simple: he would choose dying in battle over killing Shoyo a thousand times.

"Can't you find this execution worthy of someone like you, who blathered about being an educator?" it was the Tendoshu man who spoke again, distracting Gintoki from his thoughts.

“Your teacher or your friends. Choose as you prefer" said at last the amanto, speaking directly to the silver-haired samurai, who froze on the spot.

It was even worse than he thought.

That man, that amanto... How, how could he ask him to make such a choice?

What man could ever decide whether to kill his brothers or his father with his own hands?

Then the answer appeared before him as clear as the sun in a cloudless sky. Gintoki knew very well what the right choice was, what he should do.

He had to respect Shoyo's wish, he had to protect his comrades.

He had to do it.

So why wasn’t his body moving?

It was the right thing to do.

So why weren’t his legs moving forward?

Why did he feel his grip on the sword fading?

Gintoki couldn't look at his sensei. He desperately wanted to escape, take his companions and his teacher and return to the happy days they had spent together at Shoka Sonjuku, days that now were lost forever, for real this time. There was no happy ending for them. They had failed. And him more than anyone else.

Moreover, at this point, Gintoki knew he had to break one of the promises he had made to Shoyo and to Takasugi. Even in that moment he could hear their voices whispering in his ears: "Protect your friends until I come back", "If I die you have to save the sensei, I can ask only another black sheep like me". He could hear them over and over.   
Then suddenly he clutched the katana and walked towards his sensei. It was weird, he wasn't moving. It almost felt like he was watching himself walk, as if he were observing the scene from the outside of his body, the same way he saw himself acting in nightmares. It was him but at the same time it was not, as if he were at the same time protagonist and audience of that insane show.

He didn't feel anger, hate, fear, nor resentment.

He was no longer feeling anything at all.

He was like a puppet whose strings were being pulled by someone else, while the real Gintoki watched the scene from the outside, unable to do anything to influence the situation. He had almost reached Shoyo, the Crows were stepping aside to let him pass, when Takasugi yelled at him at the top of his lungs. He had understood what Gintoki had chosen to do and did not agree one bit whit his comrade.

'I'm sorry, Takasugi' thought the samurai with the silver hair, 'I will not be able to keep the promise I made you.'

"Please!" he heard him shouting again, pleading, seeing that he was not stopping, but Gintoki had made up his mind.

He raised his sword.

What he felt was indescribable. He was doing those things but it was also someone else at the same time. He was moving by inertia, almost as if his determination to respect Shoyo's wish had taken control of his body and overwhelmed his will, he would rather do anything else but what he was doing in that moment.

Only then Shoyo turned to him.

"Thank you" he only told him, smiling, using these simple words to approve the choice he had made. For a moment Gintoki’s will and determination became one and the samurai prepared to deliver the blow, smiling as well, certain that he had made the right choice, however painful. “Stop! Please!" Takasugi yelled again, begging as desperately as he had never done in his life, but Gintoki couldn't even hear him.

He charged the blow.

And then, it was a matter of seconds.

A quick stroke of his sword was all it took to end not one but four lives. It wasn't just Shoyo who died under that blow. A part of Gintoki died with him, as well as a part of Takasugi and a part of Katsura.

Their goals were dead, their lives changed forever. They had failed, as warriors and as samurai. They couldn't protect anything. What would they do now?

Gintoki just stood there, unable to fully understand what had happened.

A single tear ran down his face, he was too upset even to cry. It was now little more than an empty shell still clutching the sword with which he had killed his sensei, unable to do anything else.

_Can there be a day beyond this night?  
I don't know anymore what is true  
I can't find my direction, I'm all alone  
The only star that guided me was you_

Gintoki did not remember exactly what had happened from that moment to the time they parted ways. He remembered that Takasugi had immediately sprinted towards him, still tied up, mad with pain. He remembered that one of the Crows at that point threw a dagger at him, hitting his left eye. Then the same man later decided to leave them alive since, having they lost their purpose and the person they most wanted to protect, it was now as if they were dead.

And he was right.

At least, that was how Gintoki felt.

Throughout that speech he hadn't moved. He kept standing in the same spot. He hadn't even moved when the Crows left, taking Shoyo's corpse with them and leaving only his head to the samurai as a memento of their failure.

He could not move even when they were left alone, instead he continued to stare beyond the cliff, unable to really understand what had happened. What he had done.

Takasugi and Katsura had also remained still and silent all night, sitting far from each other and far from Gintoki. They couldn't even make eye contact. Everything that was keeping them together had died that night. They were blaming each other as much as themselves for their own failure and no one was able to see in the others a source of comfort, but only an enemy, the most difficult to kill: their own weakness.

It really was as that Crow said, _they_ had killed Shoyo, Gintoki’s sword was just the mean. They had destroyed everything they had with their own hands.

By then they were just rubbish that wasn't even worth killing, spared even by the enemy.

Could a samurai be dishonored more than this?

_How to rise from the floor?  
when it's not you I'm rising for_

The sun rose finding them still frozen in that position.

Gintoki was standing with his sword still in his hand, he hadn't moved a muscle since the night before. The real Gintoki had holed up somewhere inside that shell that only looked like him, leaving someone else standing there on the cliff, not sleeping all night. The other two still sat in silence, equally sleepless.

The thoughts that had crossed their minds that night had been the same. Sooner or later all three of them had considered committing seppuku, but in the end none of them tried it: if they could not fail at least in something, it would be not throwing away the lives that their sensei had saved at the price of his own. And the reason why all three of them hesitated to move was because they knew that, as soon as they did and looked at each other and talked, those would have been the last words they would ever say to each other and the last looks they would ever exchange.

There was no longer any place for their bond in that world, it had been cut down by Gintoki's sword the night before, along with their sensei's life and nothing could have restored it ever again.

Eventually, the first to emerge from that catatonic state was Takasugi.

He tried to open his mouth and it took him several tries before he could articulate a sentence. "Gintoki..." he hesitated a moment while his anger woke up inside him. The other man gave no sign of having heard him and this made the Kiheitai Leader finally explode.

“Gintoki! Why did you do that? Why didn't you kill us instead? " he screamed, getting up and making the silver-haired samurai turn towards him. Gintoki didn't react, he was like an empty shell at the mercy of what was happening to him. He heard Takasugi scream, he wanted to answer, but he didn't know if he would be able to. To do that, to come out of his hiding place in the inner part of himself, would have meant having to deal with reality.

“Why don't you answer to me, Gintoki?! What's wrong with you? It's like last night, isn't it? I saw you, in the tent, you know? " he kept yelling in his face, grabbing him by his lapel and squeezing it tightly to force him to look into his eyes, to wake him from that trance that was making his blood boil.

How, how could he have nothing to say?

Meanwhile, Katsura watched them from his position without intervening. On one hand, he understood Takasugi, he felt like him, but on the other hand he also understood Gintoki. Katsura didn't know what he would have done in his place. Nobody would know what to do.

In that moment Takasugi punched Gintoki in the face, but the silver-haired man didn't react to that either.

"Do you want to wake up or not? It is because of your weakness that Shoyo died! You froze, like last night, I bet on it. You couldn't understand anything and did what they told you to do. It is your fault alone. What kind of shitty samurai are you if you can't even handle your emotions? If you let your fear affect you to such an extent. You make me sick.” he concluded, knocking him to the ground.

"Takasugi..." Katsura barely said, but the other man looked at him with his right eye so intensely that it hurt. Normally Katsura would help Gintoki and calm Takasugi down, but at that moment even he didn't feel like doing anything.

Although he would not put his hands on him, at that moment he was angry at Gintoki too, an irrational rage in the desperate search for a culprit on whom he could unload all the pain he felt.

_Just do the next right thing  
Take a step, step again  
It is all that I can to do  
The next right thing_

Eventually the man with long hair just stood up, while Gintoki was still on the ground showing no sign of wanting to move and Takasugi was breathing heavily. Only in that moment he finally put a hand on his injured eye, squeezing it tightly, as if that explosion of anger had finally brought him back to reality and only then had he really started to feel the pain of the wound.

Katsura walked towards them, took the drape on which Shoyo's head was resting and knotted it up, then he took it and walked down the cliff. Takasugi followed him and even Gintoki somehow got up, vaguely starting to regain his sense of himself. He looked at the bloody bundle with Shoyo's head inside, and the more he looked at it the more he realized what he had done. The dormant emotions from the previous night began to hit him and the samurai had to make a huge effort not to collapse again in front of his… How could he define them now? Certainly not friends, and not even comrades anymore. He had to resist a little longer, so he continued to follow Katsura without saying a word and so did Takasugi.

They finally reached a point at the foot of the cliff and, without saying anything, buried the head of their sensei, sticking a katana in the ground as a tombstone. They then looked at each other and, without saying a word, began to walk in three different directions, parting their ways in what they thought was a farewell.

_I won't look too far ahead  
It's too much for me to take  
But break it down to this next breath, this next step  
This next choice is one that I can make_

**Author's Note:**

> This is the timeline I rely on, taken from canon references and adapted a little bit (based on Gintoki's age):  
> \- 8 years old: Gintoki is found by Shōyō  
> \- 10/11 y.o.: Takasugi and Katsura arrive at Shoka Sonjuku  
> \- 16/17 y.o.: Shōyō is captured and the boys go to war  
> \- 21 y.o.: Shōyō's death, jōi4's separation, Gintoki surrenders himself to the Hitotsubashi  
> \- 22 y.o.: Gintoki settles in Kabuki-chō  
> \- 27 y.o.: he meets Shinpachi and Kagura  
> \- 30 y.o.: war against the liberation army (when I wrote this ff I had not seen this yet)  
> \- 32 y.o.: after time-skip  
> \- 34 y.o.: epilogue of the manga
> 
> If you have read the same timeline in some of Bored94 works it's ok, we know eachother irl and we share the same headcanons ;)


End file.
